Chaitén and Parque Pumalin (02/16-02/18)

Tuesday, February 16th 2016

Thankfully our 12 hour bus ride was only 10 hours, because it was pretty awful! Our guidebook said it could be anywhere from 9 to 11 hours, but we mentally prepared for 12, since the buses seem to always take longer than they are supposed to. We were in a 31 seat mini bus, filled entirely with backpackers. Every seat was filled, with a couple people sitting on the floor by the door. We were up on a platform in the back row which was 5 seats across. Because we were up slightly higher than the rest of the bus when the seats in front of us were reclined they were in our laps, and they were reclined most of the way. Not all of the backpacks fit in the luggage compartment, so there were something like 10 of them creating a mountain down the aisle between the front and back of the bus. There was no bathroom on board. We were allowed out twice to pee for no more than 10 minutes each time, and we had to climb down the aisle on the arm rests to get out. The driver took additional smoke breaks for himself, but left the passengers locked inside. The only windows were small horizontal vents located at the top of just a few of the windows. We luckily had control of one of the windows, because we were the only ones to keep it open. It rained the whole way, so it was incredibly humid inside. I rode with my credit card in my hand so that I could keep our window clear. Everyone one else left their window foggy, so we couldn't see out much. There seemed to be a problem with the air conditioning, because it only came on when we were stopped. The first few hours were on paved road, but the rest was horrible rutted and potholed dirt road. We probably traveled at under 25 MPH for much of the way. The highlight of the ride was definitely our veggie sandwiches!

The outside scenery was lush green rainforest vegetation, raging rivers and waterfalls and foggy misty mountains. We drove through many miles of Parque Nacional Quelat, and park we had wanted to visit, but logistically it was too difficult without a car. We could have gotten off the bus there, but getting a ride away from there is the problem. All of the passing buses are always full and we would have had a million hitchhikers to compete with, and in the pouring rain, so we are glad we did not try to go there. 

We arrived to Chaitén around 6 PM to more pouring rain. Our backpacks had been the last two to fit into the luggage compartment, but since we were at the back of the bus, they were throw out into puddles while they took all of the rest of the backpacks out and we waited to get off. We had to walk around in the rain to 6 different hotels/guesthouses before finally finding space in the house of some old lady who had a tiny LCD sign in her window that read "hospedaje" or lodging. It turned out to be a really nice room and house with a warm wood stove going for us to dry our stuff out around. The lady made us fresh sopaipillas and we talked with another couple that was there. Ignacio and his girlfriend Maria Paz. He had spent a year in New Zealand boxing kiwis and could speak English quite well. He was quite young, just 21, but had many funny yet unfortunate stories of his travels and bad things that have happened to him, like being bit by a brown recluse spider, being stung by a poisonous starfish in Samoa and getting dengue fever in Ecuador! They were from Santiago and he invited us to come stay with him for free when we make it back to Santiago. They also rode the bus from Coyhaique today, but with a different company. Their bus left at 6 AM and ours left at 8, but we arrived about the same time, so I guess we are lucky in that respect! (Their bus made longer and more frequent stops.)

Today was easily the worst day of our trip so far, but thankfully it ended on a happy note.

(Very pleasantly surprised by the very nice room and quilts in the random house in which we stayed.)

Wednesday, February 17th 2016

Chaitén sits in view of 3 volcanos, Corcovado, with its perfect cone shape, Minchinmahuida, which looks nothing like a volcano and is covered in snow and ice, and Chaitén volcano, which also scarcely resembles a volcano. In fact residents didn't even consider Chaitén a volcano until in erupted in 2008! The whole town was evacuated. It was buried by ash and then flooded due to a natural dam forming in the nearby river. It was years before the people were allowed back, the town just sat deserted. It is still recovering and people continue to repopulate the area. During this time Pumalin Park was also closed, and did not reopen until 2011. They have since constructed a new trail leading to the top of the new crater on top of the volcano. 

Our goal for our visit to Chaitén was to visit Parque Pumalin. This is another private park started by Doug Tompkins. I believe he bought the land in 1990, so it has been around much longer than Valle Chacabuco, and as a result has had many more years to be worked on. There are many trails and campgrounds, some lodging, a restaurant and a visitor center. Unfortunately none of it is accessible without a car. Chaitén is located on a small coastal strip of land between the Northern and Southern park sectors. The main road though the park in the Carratera Austral and is currently a very rutted dirt road, as it's been raining for days. Not much traffic comes through here, only at times where people are either coming from or going to the ferry crossing that is 55 km up the road. This makes it difficult to hitchhike, in addition to the fact that there are a million other hooligans to compete with. There is sadly no organized public transportation. 

Luckily today we woke up to clear skies! We decided to take a tour that would give us an overview of the park and allows us to hike a few of the trails. We chose a company called Natour which operates out of their food truck. I found out about this company after reading through a bunch of reviews on trip advisor. They allow only a maximum of 3 people on their tours because they have only a tiny 4 seater car in which to do the tours. We were a little disappointed when we showed up and learned that Tommy, the owner, would not be the one to give the tour, but that Tim a young German kid who happened to be volunteering there would be taking us. It ended up being a great day though! Tim is only 19, but he was very fun and interesting to talk to. He's spending a year in South American that he started in October volunteering for about a month in Parque Pumalin. He's since been all the way South and back up to Chaitén, where he's been volunteering at Tommy's tour agency for the last 3 weeks. He drove like a madman over the potholes like he was in a rental car and didn't care if he damaged it, but we had a good time on the hikes. We went to a look out where we got a view of Corcovado volcano, another view point for Chaitén volcano, a short loop through an alerce forest, a trail along a rushing river to numerous waterfalls and to a black sand beach where we saw Chilean Dolphins. Alerce trees are similar to sequoia or redwood tree. They don't grow quite as tall, as they are very slow growing, just 1 mm of growth each year, but they can live to be 3-4,000 years old! We saw many big old ancient trees! Few of these magnificent trees survived because the wood is waterproof and very durable, and as a result were made into shingles for houses. The bark has a sponge like quality to it, and expands when wet, so many of the trees were stripped of their bark. The bark was used as a natural caulking material in boat building.

We were out from 10 til just after 4. We had a short break that we used to cook some pasta on our camp stoves in the hotel room. We moved hotels today because it seemed our previous place was already reserved for the night. We are now staying in a hotel called Don Carlos. 

After our cheap dinner went back out and had a kayaking tour for a few hours around sunset time with views of sealions playing in the water and occasionally jumping out around our kayaks. We got to see the lovely sunset from our boats as well. 

(A look at one of the streets in Chaitén with Volcán Corcovado in the background.)

(Some of the destruction cause by the volcano eruption. The volcano is the gray looking mountain in the middle of the photo, certainly doesn't look like much!)

(Very lush vegetation, we are standing under a huge nalca leaf. These are related to rhubarb. The stems are used in a similar way to rhubarb to make jams.)

(A nice big alerce tree.)

(Jeff and Tim walking on a part of the trail that is over top of a fallen alerce tree.)

(This is the base of a really big alerce tree at the end of the alerce trail. According to Tim, the big mass is exposed roots from a time when the ground level was much higher.)

(This tree was maybe 10 feet across.)

(Lots of slippery stairs to climb up and down on the waterfalls trail.)

(Santa Barbara Beach. According to Tim it's rated one of the most scenic in Chile by Natinal Geographic.)

(Volcán Corcovado.)

(The Natour food truck. They had really good German crumb cake. Down here it's called Kuchen.)

(Another view of the town.)

(Sealions in the water during our kayak trip.)

Thursday, February 18th 2016

Last night we made no plans, deciding we would wait and see how the weather was. We awoke to soggy, misty mountains and rain. 

We went downstairs for our free hotel breakfast, and found it was again the standard round bread rolls with jam, butter and cheese slices plus instant coffee and tea. Because it was a fancier hotel, bread was brought out to the table for people individually as they sat down. We normally eat 3 or 4 each, but were allotted just 2. We sat for awhile and watched the other diners come and go and marveled at how they are barely ate anything. Some of them would cut a roll into quarters and eat only 1/4! I don't know if a single one of them out of 20 or so ate a whole roll. We are baffled and don't understand what and when Chileans eat! It seems that to most of them the instant coffee was their only interest.

After breakfast we went around town to explore our escape options. We had three options: take a 9 hour ferry north to Puerto Montt, take a 6 hour ferry across the bay to the island of Chiloé (then work our way north by bus and ferry over the next few days), or take a 10 hour bus and ferry combination to Puerto Montt. We had wanted to stay another few days and explore more of Parque Pumalin, especially the trail to the top of Chaitén's crater, but we don't want to sit around in a hotel all day waiting for the rain to pass.

Each ferry only goes 3 days a week, but today happened to be a day in which a ferry goes to both Chiloé and Puerto Montt, however, they were both sold out until Tuesday, 5 days away. So we went to the bus ticket office, the option we liked the least, and found out they were also sold out until Tuesday. We didn't want to be stuck for 5 days, so we considered hitchhiking, but there isn't much traffic through here and standing in the rain for hours waiting for some one to pick us up didn't sound too appealing. We learned that we could come back to the bus station and try to get on as standees, so we figured this was our best option. 

We went back to our hotel to pack up and headed back to the bus station. We were discouraged to find many others also waiting to try to get on the bus standing. It all worked out though and we made it on the bus. They packed in everyone that had been waiting, and it didn't appear there was any spare room in the aisle. We managed to somehow get a seat at the front of the bus. Everyone with a ticket was supposed to have a seat, but no one ever came to claim the seat. I sat on Jeff's lap for awhile, but eventually moved to the floor between his feet, which with the help of our foam z seats, was actually quite comfortable. We rode over bumpy dirt road for 1 1/2 hours to the first ferry. The ride on the ferry was half and hour. We reached a point of land, the narrow part of a peninsula, which we crossed by bus in about 15 minutes, then came to the next ferry. We lost track of time on that ferry, it was something like 4 hours. The weather remained foggy and drizzly and everyone was crammed into the indoor passenger lounge. We were on long enough for them to play a movie, a horrible violent Nicolas Cage movie called Joe. There was a small cafeteria on board where we were able to buy cookies, donuts and empanadas. After the ferry ride Jeff and I both got seats on the bus, since more passengers got off in Hornopirén, the town where the ferry ride ended. From there is was 3 more hours to Puerto Montt with one more short, 30 minute, ferry ride across the Estero de Reloncaví just south of Puerto Montt. We got into Puerto Montt around 8 and immediately found a Sopaipilla lady. We each ate two and called it a good dinner! 

From the terminal we walked a ways along the Costanera enjoying the warm sunny weather. It sure felt good to be back in a more temperate climate with more amenities and be done with the Carratera Austral and its bumpy roads and long bus rides! We decided to go back to Casa Perla, the guesthouse we had stayed in before. We figured the house would be all full, but she allows camping in her yard. We were able to squeeze our tent in between two other on an unfortunate slope, but we were happy enough to just be done for the day. It was another long annoying day of bus travel, but it was way better than it could have been, there were still at least 10 people still standing when we arrived to town!

(Map at the ferry office showing the different ferry routes, across to Chiloé island and up to Puerto Montt.)

(A map that makes the bus and ferry ride route make more sense.)

(We got to sit right behind the driver with a great view out the whole way. I wish my bus had a glass compartment in which I could isolate myself!)

(View up Estero de Reloncaví, Chile's northernmost fjord. We will be doing a hike up that way in the Cochamó Valley.)